EDBI Negotiating Russian, Chinese Credit Lines

The Export Development Bank of Iran announced that in addition to the previously agreed credit lines, his bank is negotiating new ones with a Russian lender and two Chinese banks.

“We have managed to sign finance and refinance deals with South Korea, China and Austria while we are also reaching an agreement with a Russian bank for new credit lines,” Ali Salehabadi was also quoted as saying by IRNA.

He noted that in addition to previous Chinese banks that granted credit lines to EDBI, the bank is in talks with two other banks in the Asian country for more funds.

On September 2017, an agreement was signed between China’s CITIC Trust and five Iranian banks at CITIC Group headquarters in Beijing, based on which the Chinese company will extend $10 billion of credit line for supporting projects in Iran.

At the same time, another finance deal worth €15 billion was signed with the Development Bank of China on financing construction and production projects.

The EDBI chief noted that his bank intends to reclaim Iran’s frozen assets overseas, which happened during the years of sanctions and fortunately, the bank has succeeded in repatriating resources from Cuba, Sri Lanka and Tajikistan.

“The National Development Fund of Iran has allocated 7 trillion rials ($172.8 million) worth of credit to EDBI for it to be paid out as export loans during the current fiscal year (started March 21). This is while we doled out a total of 30 trillion rials ($740.7 million) as export loans during the first six months of the current fiscal year,” he said.         

Salehabadi noted that in addition to major European and East Asian countries, the establishment of correspondent banking relations with African countries also tops EDBI’s agenda this year.